


The Sea Calls Back to You

by RocBaroque



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Corpse Desecration, Dragons, F/M, Gen, Genocide, Harm to Children, Original Character Death(s), PTSD for everyone, Tags Contain Spoilers, for all three of you who also want that Deep Nabatean Lore, god the tags on this are going to be a wreck, headcanons the whole way down, my oc dies like immediately :') rip, the Red Canyon Massacre, the War of Heroes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:47:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24184606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RocBaroque/pseuds/RocBaroque
Summary: An account of worthy actions undertaken by the Saint of Authority Over the Earth during the War of Heroes.(As well as: the murder of his Mother, the death of his wife, the mortal trauma of his surviving child, the genocide of his people, the severance of his family, the loss of an entire nation's history, and the establishment of a deceitful but ultimately necessary check on the aggressions of humanity.)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	1. Eithne

**Author's Note:**

> usually I only do these at the end but given this is going to be a Tough Series, I'll be putting them at the beginning for use of specific content warnings. rest assured that if sexual violence of any sort is a big No for you, it is for me too and will never occur here.
> 
> anyway:
> 
> chapter 1 just has a brief sexy scene. and probably the only sexy scene. do not read this for sexy scenes. it's pain and trauma the whole way down. :')

Sunlight has broken through the heavy blue curtains for long enough now that she can no longer ignore it. She raises her hand to block the stripe of light falling over her eyes, wondering a moment at how it bleeds through the thin linen of her shirt, giving her skin a rosy halo.

_A little longer. Please_. She gathers her short, curling hair behind her on the pillow, rolling to her side and sinking further into her husband's arms. The bed smells foreign — such an odd way to think of it, they were family, not foreigners — but the closer she draws to him the more the unfamiliar gives way. And with it, reality reasserts itself on her recently-dreaming mind.

The looming unease, the suffocating heartsickness. The unthinkable lurking behind their eyelids like ghosts on their vision. The empty throne of heaven.

His arms shift around her. She turns her head to him, humming at the warmth of his breath on her neck. "Still asleep?" She murmurs. No response. Still asleep. In the corner of her eye she can see a small wrinkle between his brows. Even in sleep, he's worrying. Her heartache, for a moment, is for him.

No, this won't do. They are home for the first time in ages. They are surrounded by friends and loved ones. Their daughter will meet everyone — _all_ of the Children of the Goddess, together! In their birthplace! — and after the day's deliberations, she'll see every park and stream and fountain, a crowd of admirers trailing her as though she were some kingdom princess.

There is only the present moment. And at this moment, she shares the world's plushest guest bed with her magnificent husband, their daughter far away in her own wing of the estate, and the doors most _definitely_ locked.

A small smile curves her lips. She gently repositions his hand to curl over her breast, and nestles herself firmly against him, wriggling into his hips. His breath hitches in his sleep; a short, soft growl shivers between his chest and her shoulder blades.

"En."

She turns into the sound, letting the ridge of her ear brush his lips. "Yes, Key?" She asks, all innocence.

"This is my brother's bed."

"His guest bed," she corrects him. She can feel through the thin material of his pants that his voice isn't the only thing stirring from sleep. She arches her back coyly, dipping her shoulder to invite him to kiss her neck. His mouth is hot on her skin, but no sooner has that pleasant heat begun to coil down her spine than he deftly repositions himself, thwarting her plans.

"And we are guests."

She can't disguise the disappointed sigh that escapes her throat. "I suppose." But his arms are around her and they still have this moment. She turns to him, face-to-face, tucking her head into his bare shoulder, curling her hands against his chest. He still smells like wind, cured leather, and dusty wyvern hide from their journey yesterday. She breathes it in like incense.

His waking thoughts take root in him like weeds — she can feel it in his breathing, steady but stiff. The building dread of the last few days, that terrible weight. The empty throne of heaven. _A little longer. Please._ She nestles her forehead against his cheek. "We could take Cethleann to see the water gardens today," she suggests.

He makes a noncommittal sound. "Her celebrity here concerns me."

"Would you lock her away in a tower?" She teases. "You heard how delighted she was just seeing them from above. If you deny her this I fear she would never forgive you."

"Never," he repeats, weighing the alternatives. "If she grew to feel entitled to everyone's fawning and worship, I would never forgive myself."

"She is only sixty decades," she reminds him. "I doubt a day or two of Zanado's flattery will register in her memory."

Another grunt, neither yes nor no.

"Well." She smooths a stray lock behind his ear, lets her finger glide down the length of his jaw. "If you must lock her away, let her live like a princess for tonight, at least. Or is the entire city wrong to think she is the dearest, most remarkable thing they've ever laid eyes on?"

His arms stiffen around her. "I never said that."

"And all before they even see—" Her heart skips a beat. She lightly drums her fingertips on his chin. "Will you ask Macuil to see to my research notes? When next you see him. He _must_ take my theories more seriously now."

He mumbles something ambivalent. She props herself on one elbow to properly show him her frown. "Key," she warns.

Faint purple shadows line his eyes. Rather than causing him to look weary, they make his irises even greener. The wrinkle of worry between his brows has grown. "She is already the first of our next generation. I'm reluctant that she should also be reduced to the proof in some equation."

"I've worked _endlessly_ on this—" She starts, but he takes her hand in his and presses it to his lips.

"I will," he promises.

Her bristling fades and her heart settles. She sinks back to her pillow, curls pooling like sea water. "They will love her for who she is," she whispers. "The way we do. It would be impossible for them to do otherwise. And—" She brightens somewhat. "Proof that our Crests live in our blood — more of the second generation will be born. She will have cousins."

"You think so." He smiles, kissing her hand again.

"Bríg will waste no more time," she insists. "She and Lamech would be married within the week. And you could not convince me that Seiros would disdain having children, not after she was ready to burst into tears at meeting Cethleann."

The frown returns at the mention of his sister. "You could not convince me she harbors any maternal instinct."

"And yet the proof was right before your eyes." She smiles gently.

His eyes lift to find hers, his expression softening. With the grave air of a painter, he draws a few of her pale green curls from behind her ear, arranging them to frame her cheek and her throat.

"Eithne," he murmurs.

Seven hundred years — seven hundred years and she still shivers to hear her name in his voice. "Yes, Cichol?"

He draws her back into his arms, kissing her with a slow-building heat. The plush, feather-filled bedding rustles when he pulls her on top of him.

"Oh—" She sits up, straddling him, bracing her hands on his stomach as the muscles there tense tighter and tighter. He is _awake_ , iron-hard and hot beneath her. She sings another surprised note when his hands move to squeeze her backside, keeping her firmly in place for one extremely tantalizing roll of his hips.

"Isn't this your brother's bed?" She asks, struggling to keep her breath.

"His guest bed." His gaze is bright, intense.

She bites her lip and smiles, the friction between her thighs already unbearable. "My mistake."

His fingers work under the hem of her shirt, calluses catching on the fabric. She bends to let him kiss her more, pale green hair falling around her face like a sunshower. Her hands work feverishly at the laces of his pants, his knead up along her spine. His teeth rake her lower lip; a ragged gasp breaks from her throat. She teases a soft moan from him when the laces finally give way and her fingers dip below his waistband, feathering the smooth, burning skin of—

He seizes her wrist.

She stops, raises her head, trying to read his expression through the haze. His face turns, eyes refocusing on the bedroom doors.

The doors. Someone is knocking.

"A little longer," he mutters under his breath, closing his eyes.

She sits up straight, taking a deep breath to steady herself. "Who is it?" She asks, her voice clear and cold.

"Indech." The deep, rough, apologetic voice of her brother-in-law. There is a heavily pregnant pause. "Sorry."

Eithne covers her reddening face with her hands. "Yes, Indech?" She answers in the same, plausibly deniable tone.

"Go away," her husband whispers darkly. She swats his shoulder.

"Sorry," Indech repeats himself. "Leann requested I bring her Kernunos." Another pause. "I have no idea what Kernunos is."

"A stuffed wyvern doll." Cichol rises up to his elbows, glaring at the doors. "With the effects we brought in last night."

"It really isn't among them," his brother insists. "Sorry," for the third time.

With a heavy, silent sigh, Eithne collapses to the side of the bed. "We will be out shortly," she informs him. All that wonderful heat and pressure has evaporated into a disappointed ache. The two of them lie together in frustrated silence, before Cichol raises her hand to his lips again. Another sigh deflates her. She pats his cheek.

"I could flay that horrible beard from his skull right now," he muses as though it were the most reasonable thing in the world.

"I don't find it horrible at all," she admits, swinging her long legs over the side of the bed. "I think it makes him look a bit dashing."

"I could dash his head against the—"

"Key." She smothers her laugh. "We are needed."

The two emerge from the guest bedroom of Indech's estate a short time after, washed and dressed and not at all resentful. The guest wing is modest, especially for a man of Indech's rank and stature, the marble ungilded and the tapestries simple. Owing to the relatively small size of his manor, they only cross paths with two of the household servants, dull-haired and short-eared. Towering open windows let in the late-spring morning air, immediately lifting Eithne's mood. Cichol, however, refuses to stop scowling, despite her best attempts at light-hearted teasing. Until they reach the breakfast room.

Light, laughter, and the smell of smoked salmon. A table laden with thick-sliced breads, soft cheeses, dried fish. Indech's sharp eyes and reserved expression — so like his brother but so different! — transformed with joy. The laughter breaks immediately into a lilting, bubbling voice: "Mother! Father, have you brought — oh, it's Kernunos!"

She breaks into a run around the table, glass-green hair streaming from the glittering clips on either side of her cherished head. Every ounce of irritation vanishes from his body. Cichol crouches on his heels, holding out the tattered-and-patched creature they had so thoughtlessly locked away from their daughter. She sweeps it from his hands with practiced melodrama — "My poor Kernunos!" — before planting a gracious peck on her father's cheek. The smile that warms his face is indescribable — has always been indescribable to Eithne, even in the sixty-odd decades of trying. Her heart swells to bursting every time.

"Is that better, Leann?" Indech pulls her chair out for her to reclaim her seat by him.

"Much, Uncle. Thank you so much for your assistance." She scoots in next to him, in front of a plate far too heavy with salmon. As an afterthought, she places a kiss on his cheek as well. She squeaks at the touch of his bristling facial hair, and to his obvious embarrassment devotes herself to rubbing her hands on both sides of his face as though he were a particularly spiny cat.

Her brother-in-law gives Eithne a sheepish smile from between Cethleann's palms, gesturing the two of them forward. She sweeps her white skirts around her legs to be seated and tries to make sense of the sheer amount of food on offer.

"You must have Uncle Indech wrapped around your little finger," Cichol observes dryly, "to convince him you need _this_ much salmon to start your day."

Indech mumbles an apology. Cethleann's peridot-green eyes are round with innocence.

"It's not so often there is an uncle around to spoil you, is there?" Eithne faux-whispers to her conspiratorially.

The breakfast begins in pleasantries and small talk, every so often a drab servant appearing to clear dishes away. Indech has taken well to assuming authority of the Zanado guard. Indeed, Eithne recognizes more and more the changes in him — beyond the slightly-audacious beard, his bearing is straighter, more self-assured, his expressions open and intent. When first they met, Eithne could hardly believe such a hesitant, withdrawn man to be in any way be related to her husband. Now he seems to fit the part. Appropriate, given he was the one to take command in Zanado when Cichol left for Enbarr.

Watching the two of them trade brotherly barbs highlights an ache she's wrestled with for many centuries. Kind-hearted to a fault, Indech has done his best to help her feel part of the family, but she knows how Macuil and Seiros feel: she is the one who kept their brother from Zanado. She pretends _not_ to know, to dampen further familial strife, and because they are all the family she has. Eithne has no brothers or sisters, created as she was from a separate face of the Holy Mother's innumerably-faceted crystalline heart. If she—

The thought is like a gust of wind guttering a candle. She will _have_ no brothers or sisters. The Holy Mother is gone. The darkness she has been desperate to stave off since she opened her eyes this morning takes her with cold efficiency. 

It's as if her inner state were on display for the whole world. Indech and Cichol have fallen silent. Cethleann glances between the adults, trying to puzzle out the source of their distress. They all felt it, all over the continent, the moment their Divine Mother, the Beginning of them all, ended. All of them sat teetering on the edge of a bleak, bottomless void. All of them saw the empty throne.

A hesitant throat-clearing breaks their inauspicious silence. One of Indech's yellow-haired servants stands at the doorway, holding a thickly-folded parchment. Indech sweeps a napkin over his dark green jaw, motioning them forward.

Eithne catches her daughter's attention while Indech reads in silence. She wiggles one ear, making the curls of her hair bounce like spun sugar. Cethleann's eyes widen. Eithne winks, wiggles the other ear.

"Leann," Indech says finally. His face is carefully blank as he sets down the missive. "Do you like sour cherries? If you pass through those doors there into the kitchen you can ask Miss Lavinia for a sour cherry biscuit. She's famous for them."

Cethleann sits bolt upright. "Famous?"

Cichol shoots his brother a look over the top of her head, but says, "Go on, now."

Like a bolt of light, Cethleann is gone, her heels clattering across the polished floor, the doors clicking shut behind her. Cichol takes up the letter.

"What is it?" Eithne ventures in an undertone.

"Three have yet to arrive," Cichol reads, his eyes narrowing. "Tuireann, Conand, and Bres."

"They promised to arrive soon after you three." Indech rests his chin on his folded hands.

"Could they not have been merely postponed?" Eithne will _not_ entertain the worst.

"Bres is as punctual as he is ugly," Indech says, before having the civility to look apologetic. 

"And he surely would have sent notice if his party had been deferred." Cichol crosses his arms over his chest, turning his face aside to stare into his thoughts.

Eithne is struck with the oddest, most foreboding pain in her heart. Here, watching him in profile, his long nose and strong chin and thoughtful eyes, his forest-green hair tied back in a neat knot behind the graceful points of his ears — she thinks, _What if I never see him again?_

"I will take Orlagh to scout their anticipated path," he says, and her blood freezes.

Indech nods slowly. "We may as well. Deliberations can't begin until all of us are here. I will send for Seiros to—"

"That will not be necessary," Cichol interrupts him firmly.

"She'll come when she hears of it, or she will rage at us after the fact," his brother counters, mild. "Which do you prefer?"

"Scouting is not a three person affair."

Indech blinks at him, seemingly at a loss. "Brother, forgive me, but... You gave up your authority over me when I took command of your post."

Eithne can feel him bristling, but before Cichol can deliver his retort, Indech turns to call back down the hall. The yellow-haired servant appears again.

"Leaving already?" Eithne speaks up, alarmed. Her husband rises from the table to take her hands, but she can see in his eyes that he is already on a wyvern and four steps toward their objective. Each hand receives a brief kiss, and another is pressed to her lips.

"Be safe," she intones, faintly. An unaccountable dread washes through her, blotting out the sunlight. She wants to beg him to stay, to let Seiros and Indech defend Zanado — this isn't his calling anymore. Soon Cethleann will return with a biscuit in each fist, urging them to try one, asking after the diversions of this splendid old city in a steady stream of lilting, innocent questions—

The two brothers are gone. The room is silent.

The moment has passed.


	2. Finding the Bodies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cichol, Indech, and Seiros locate their missing kin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's your chapter content warning: the tags apply, and also a horse dies near the end. sorry :/

Her ice-green eyes glance over him as though she can't be bothered to grant him an extra thought. "It is good to see you here, brother. Your assistance in this venture is appreciated." She always did have a talent for affecting such a dissembling tone. He could almost believe she meant it.

"Seiros." He busies himself with adjusting the rigging on Orlagh's scouting gear. The young wyvern holds stock still, patient and well-trained, though her nostrils flare at the scent of resentment.

"You come well-armed," she observes, serene. The snowy pegasus under her paws at the cobblestones. "I see you have taken my concerns seriously."

"He always prepares for the worst," Indech breaks in with better humor than both of them combined — but the divine weapon Inexhaustible glimmers at his shoulder, strapped over his light plate. He shifts his weight uncomfortably in the seat behind Seiros.

Cichol chooses to respond to neither of them, instead gripping Orlagh by the antler and vaulting to her back.

"Are you to maintain this silent treatment for the length of your visit, brother?" Seiros continues to needle at him in that gentle voice. "How long before you once again retreat for your human city?"

"Sister," Indech tries to stop her, frowning.

"Another day," Cichol answers in spite of Indech's protest, "and plenty of time to enjoy your petty hostility."

Their brother rubs the bridge of his nose.

Eager enmity shines in Seiros's eyes. "I hope you will forgive me for grieving so over the loss of my Mother — apologies, _our_ Mother." Her lips curve into a furious smile. "I have cause to forget on occasion that you were her first-born. As it seems you have, as well."

He tightens the straps securing the heavy white shield to his forearm, and gives her a hollow look.

"But then, what is family and duty," she continues sweetly, wheeling her increasingly nervous pegasus in place. "When there exist _pretty beaches_ and _pretty slatterns_ to—"

" _Enough_." Indech so rarely raises his voice, it's all too easy to forget the way it can boom when he needs it to. Seiros's mount cries out. Orlagh is dutifully still. "Cichol," he adds, eyeing his eldest brother with alarm.

Light as it is, he cannot recall when he drew the Spear of Assal. Nor when, exactly, his fury urged him to do so.

Averting his glare, he replaces the weapon behind him and gathers Orlagh's reins in his hands. With a nudge from his knees and a quick whistle, she's in the air, powerful wings carrying them away the earth.

Zanado retreats beneath them, a glittering opal set against the copper walls of the Red Canyon. His brief fit of anger falls away with it. There's no room for it in the sky.

She hasn't the agility of a pegasus, but Orlagh is _faster_ , and already they coast in wider and wider circles above the city, silent but for the whistling wind. He drops the reigns to clutch the harness at her neck, pressing himself against her armored plates. The speed and the strength of his wyverns have always quietly exhilarated him in a way the others failed to gras; perhaps, because it was such a counterintuitive concept. The Absolute of Earth, born naturally flightless, taking to the sky like a fish to water. The Divine Mother performs her work in unknowable—

Pain behind his ribs, in the back of his throat, so sudden it makes him gasp. He was her first-born. And he wasn't here. When the horrifying, the unthinkable happened, her body _desecrated_ while she lay gentle and helpless—

Cichol presses his face to the wyvern's hide, closing his eyes, taking deep, shuddering breaths.

He had been _aware_ of his grief before, the way one is aware of a crack in a castle's foundation. _This will crumble us, but not today._ There was too much else to consider — or was he expected to lose his composure in sight of those who relied on it? Allow his young daughter to watch him collapse? His siblings to catch him wild?

But he had mistaken his refusal to mourn as an immunity to the concept entirely.

Alone with the sky and Orlagh's confused rumbles, his quiet sobs hollow him out.

Orlagh dips her wings after a time — descending. Hastily he jerks at her reins. She's trying to ground him. The poor thing is young and too compassionate by half. He pats her, surreptitiously drying the back of her neck with his sleeve. No need for that, he thinks, sitting up straight with one final deep breath. He is... _will be_ fine. And Seiros is finally catching up.

Her pegasus labors under his two passengers. Even from here, Indech's discomfort is obvious. Cichol considers, briefly, pitying him, but if his brother had not insisted on fetching Seiros he would have been guaranteed a much smoother wyvern ride, and no familial strife. Instead he guides Orlagh to hover in place while he waits for Seiros to assert her authority.

Without a glance at him, his sister raises her fist, then slices the air with the blade of her hand. She intends to use scout signs, then. Fine. Between the high-altitude gusts and their mutual inability to hold their tongues, perhaps it's for the best. From the back of their mount and over his brass pauldrons, Indech shoots him a wide-eyed look. In a burst of wind and feather-dust, the pegasus dives and rolls, gravity catapulting him to a speed he couldn't have otherwise achieved. The Bríg Maneuver. Exhausting for a mount under _usual_ circumstances.

Cichol sighs, rolls his shoulders in a vain attempt to loosen the stress, and nudges Orlagh into a sprint.

And again, for a long time, there is only the open air, the beating of wyvern wings, and his thoughts.

If the Red Canyon is copper, the trees and fields beyond are a turquoise patina creeping through the cracks and curves. From high above the mottled mix of blue, green and black fuzzes together into nonsense, visual noise, but there are roads down there, camps and outposts. He remembers from the truly innumerable patrols, both on the wing and on foot. And he remembers from being there when they were built, one brother drawing the plans and the other bringing them to fruition. They three were the first, after all. When their Divine Mother (his hands tighten on the reins until the leather creaks, the traditional funeral blessing immediately jumping to the front of his thoughts, but if you're to sing the dead into the arms of their Mother then to whom does the Mother's soul return)—when their Divine Mother saw fit to create others, not to be siblings but to be a _people_ , the Planner and the Builder looked to him and found... Well, they found...

_This is not your fault._

...A man who promised to leave but abdicated to another, centuries too soon...

_This is not your fault!_

Then whose? Indech, for failing to set a proper watch? Macuil, for never anticipating so brazen an enemy (so vile an act)? Could his time guiding the humans of Enbarr not have been better spent protecting his own people? Could they have left summers in Enbarr and winters at Rhodos behind? Could Eithne have continued her research in Zanado, could Cethleann have found peers with which to mature, properly?

A sudden flash of white draws his attention to without. Seiros slows, the fabric of her chiton billowing with poetic savagery, late afternoon sunlight glinting from her ivory shield. She gestures to him again with a wide sweep of her arm, bringing her fingertips to her temple, and pointing south-east. Tendrils of deep, muddy brown drift skyward from a copse of evergreens. Smoke, perhaps a campfire. If it's Bres and his party, they've left the arterial road.

A bit of dread crystallizes between his ribs. Seiros leads their descent.

The smoke is acrid, unpleasant. Orlagh rears her head away and growls, grazing him with her antlers. Alarmed, he grips one of the points and forces her head forward. She was trained to maintain her position in even fierce combat — _he_ trained her, personally. What could be causing her fear?

His sister's pegasus resists landing, whinnying in ever more wild pitch.

There is a clearing here — a scar. Heat rises from the blackened soil and the still-smoldering evergreens. It isn't just the smoke burning their eyes and nostrils; the air is heavy with ozone and thick with residual magic.

No sooner has Cichol swung down from the saddle does his wyvern lift off again, still tossing her head. He thinks to scold her and force her back down, but the ever-growing sense of dread stays him. Instead, he gives her the command to circle. Orlagh has never left him for the open sky so quickly.

Through the gray-brown haze, an unrecognizable shadow looms over him, motionless.

Seiros is forced to dismount from an unusual height, arriving in a rush of gold and linen. Indech's landing is considerably less elegant, sending a cloud of ash and particulate into the air around them.

"What happened here?" The big man cautions in a quiet voice.

Cichol lifts a hand to part the smoke, squinting through watering eyes. The land beneath him feels hollow, as though it had been transmuted to ash down to the earth's center. The grim fear making space in his heart begins to whisper — _something terrible. That's what's happened._

"Enough of this." Seiros raises a white hand.

An aura of wind rises around them, sweet and clean. The remaining embers blaze like lanterns. The air is crystal clear.

Seiros's scream is sudden and ragged. Indech stands mute, pale as a ghost. And his own disbelief forces Cichol to take a step forward.

_This can't be._

A great, motionless maw gapes down at them, tongue black and swollen. A once-proud head, framed with horns like blades, hangs from a long and broken neck. Feathers, scales and mud, exposed yellow bone, her chest and belly sawed open like a careless hunter's kill.

This was once the Storm-Bringer. This was Tuireann.

The shock is yet to catch him. He keeps moving. The only one of the three still sensate, Cichol crouches by the jagged wound. Large enough for him... A wyvern... Perhaps another wyvern. Dumbly he reaches for the ragged flesh at her chest. Her ribs are splintered, some missing. Some of her teeth are gone as well. And the last four feet of her tail (deadly, magnificent, lined with barbs that caught the lightning and threw it at you in sparks or entire bolts, the only of his lieutenants who could knock him from the sky)—

"Her heart." Indech's voice reaches him as if through meters of rock and sand. "It's gone."

So it is. That cold entombing feeling has yet to break, and for now he's glad of it. The Storm-Bringer is felled and desecrated. In much the same manner, he thinks, as the Divine Mother.

"Where are the others?" When was the last time Indech sounded so small? Their green eyes meet (when was the last time Indech looked so shaken?), and together, wordlessly, they stare down the scar of burnt wood and sterile earth.

Seiros has found herself. She races ahead of them, pale hair fluttering like a shroud. The haze parts around her. Another mountainous shape, still and broken, trees and bone splintered about. Indech falls out of step behind him. "Is it—" His younger brother begins, but his voice breaks.

_No_ , he wants to say. _How unthinkable! Of course it isn't._ But the towering corpse before him is too familiar, even with his armored plates hacked away from his hide, his claws severed at their roots, and his chest flayed open to the cracked and dripping ribs.

"The Dauntless," Cichol confirms. This was Conand. Once his friend. Now ripped to bloody—

—But, no. There is so much less blood here than one would expect, isn't there?

Seiros wails somewhere out of sight. She is further along in this nightmare. The freezing-shock is beginning to crack, making way for a horrible fever, a prickling dread. He has no desire to see Bres like this. And he wants very much to return to his family.

"Tracks." Indech swallows audibly. "Or a path. The raiders will have left one. There are no other corpses here. And they took — there is too much missing from—"

"Yes," Cichol hears himself agree, even as visions of his wife and daughter, without him, loom large in his mind. "It should be a simple matter to track them." _And how long will that take?_ "Perhaps there is a connection between this and the sin against Mother." _And what would that mean?_

The theft of bones, of hearts and blood.

_Eithne's glowing, heart-shaped face, framed in sea-green curls and the day's first light. "Proof," she beams, "that our Crests live in our blood—"_

A wyvern's roar pierces the air: Orlagh sounding an alarm, a nervous pegasus whinny joining her. Platinum gleams in the light beside him. Seiros is beside him, the wicked curves of her sword wavering like a heat mirage. Indech hasn't drawn, not yet, but the Inexhaustible hums in his gauntleted fist. Cichol raises a hand to stay them. "Not a hostile," he mutters. His wyvern would have joined him, not held her position.

Little eddies of dust and ash swirl into the air. A single mote of bright emerald light flies toward them like an arrow, like an inescapable thought — before vanishing in a beam of green and violet iridescence. Before seeing, even before hearing, he feels it: first the approaching, frenzied thunder of a mount driven far too fast to survive the exertion, and next the manic pitch of dark magic, swelling to an ambient hysteria as it approaches.

"Macuil." The plates and leather of his armor creak and rustle as Indech relaxes, then immediately tenses again.

_Because why would Macuil be here._

With an agonized scream, a coal-black mare explodes into the burned clearing, wisps of green ether trailing from her fetlocks, flecks of spittle and blood foaming at the corners of her mouth. Her rider is barely dressed, pale and disordered. Deep green hair spills from a braid come loose. The tips of his ears are blue, and blood has sprayed unsightly red freckles across his face.

"Your horse," Seiros cries, sheathing her sword to run to him. "She has bled all over you!"

Macuil slumps against the mare's bare back. When his sister pulls him to her shoulder he begins mouthing words with no sound.

"Not hers," he manages to gasp, his deep voice raw and cracking.

The spell sustaining her dissipates into the wind, and the mare stumbles to the ground, breathing her last. Seiros seems only to be capable of watching it happen, her face a mask of horror.

"Zanado."

The word rattles its way from Macuil's throat and shakes loose the abject fear Cichol has been desperate to restrain. And the Tactician, the Second-Born, the Wind-Caller, the Author of dark magic itself, stares up at his only elder brother like a terrified child.

"Zanado burns."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter is called Red Canyon, so, look forward to it :)
> 
> I just *clenches fist* love em-dashes so much


End file.
